Eagle Ford Rig Count Soaring Through Records – April 20, 2012

The Eagle Ford Shale drilling rig count rose four rigs to 278 working units. That eclipses the previous regional record of 275 set in mid-march. That’s the rig count for the entire area, but from looking at operators and locations we’ve likely surpassed 250 rigs targeting the Eagle Ford alone. The other 10% of rigs are targeting formations other than the Eagle Ford proper.

Eagle Ford Oil & Gas Rigs

The natural gas directed rig count fell one rig to 70 running this week. That’s on the back of hitting 11 year lows today in the natural gas spot market. I know that sounds like a broken record, but we’ve hit new lows for Henry Hub prices in three of the past four weeks. Oil directed activity jumped five rigs to 207. That surpasses last weeks record of 202.

Future prices for Henry Hub were trading at $1.92/mmbtu as of Friday afternoon. Oil prices have gone almost unchanged the past three weeks $103 per barrel (WTI).

260 horizontal rigs are running and we have 1 storage well being drilled in La Salle County. Karnes County leads development with 44 rigs. La Salle (40), Webb (30), McMullen (27), Dimmit (26), DeWitt (24), Gonzales (23), Live Oak (11), and Atascosa, Frio, and Zavala counties with 8 rigs each make up the top Eagle Ford counties.

If you are headed to San Antonio/South Texas, visit our Eagle Ford Hotels page. We’ve negotiated discounted rates with hotels that are welcoming the Oil & Gas Industry.

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Drilling Rig Count by Operator

Operator Name

Prior Week

Current Week

Chesapeake

35

35

EOG Resources

30

29

Petrohawk (BHP)

20

21

Marathon Oil (Hilcorp)

17

17

ConocoPhillips

15

16

Pioneer Natural

12

12

Talisman Energy (Statoil)

13

12

Anadarko

10

11

Murphy Oil

10

10

Lewis Petroleum

8

9

Plains Exploration

8

8

SM Energy

7

7

Shell

7

6

Swift Energy

6

6

Hunt Oil

5

5

Rosetta

5

5

Carrizo Oil & Gas

4

4

Exxon (XTO

5

4

Dan Hughes

2

3

El Paso Energy

3

3

All Others

52

55

Total

274

278

While missed in the census this week, Lewis Petroleum has indicated it has 11 rigs running. That means the actual rig count is 280.

What is the Rig Count?

The Eagle Ford Shale Rig Count is an index of the total number of oil & gas drilling rigs running across a 30 county area in South Texas. The South Texas rigs referred to in this article are for ALL drilling reported by SmithBits and not solely wells targeting the Eagle Ford formation. All land rigs and onshore rig data shown here are based upon industry estimates provided by the Baker Hughes Rig Count and/or Smith Service Co’s (Schlumberger) Smith Rig Count.